Remember
by darthluna01
Summary: Following "100," the grief and slow healing process of Aaron and Jack Hotchner, compressed into a small one-shot.


_"If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were." - Kahlil Gibran_

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Her body is perfectly intact and clean now that the blood has been carefully washed off and her clothes replaced and bagged. Her hair, the dye now faded, slowly turns back to its natural blond. It's almost as if her death took the brown pigment with it. The shell that remains from her departure lays unnaturally still among the sterile white sheets. Today is the day he claims her body from its status as evidence from the morgue. Thank G-d, (and dare he thank Foyet) for the fact that and autopsy wasn't necessary. As the metallic wheels roll away and out into the busier halls, out of this inhuman cold, he feels his hollow insides sting.

But he does not cry. The painful, all too familiar feel of loss has pervaded his own soul so much that now there is a point where there are no tears left to shed. Or so he thinks. Gliding simply on the road, the rest of the day goes automatically. Drop her off, meander on the road back to his apartment. Something within him has stirred at the thought of returning there. For now, it is where he and Jack will stay. At the moment he recalls that his ex-sister-in-law will be watching over her nephew there.

When he comes through the door, he does not say anything to her. With the barest of looks, she knows that there is nothing that she can say. He does not know what to think when he _does _know that as soon as she is back in her own car, she will breakdown by herself.

Jack is on the floor, drawing quietly and easily. When his father sits next to him on the couch, he stops. "Daddy? What is it?"

Admiring his son's superior powers of perception, and not willing to deceive (for now he cannot bear to do so again, ever), he replies, "I'm just thinking."

"About Mommy?" Even though the young one handles it well, there are recognizable traces of sadness in his voice. But he gets through it because he simply knows.

"Yes."

"She's in a better place now, right?"

He closes his eyes and allows the slightest of sighs to escape him. "Right."

* * *

Funerals, as Reid would explain, vary by culture. In Eastern cultures, it is common to wear white as it is the color of mourning as opposed to black. Incense and other things are burnt for passage of the deceased's soul, and there are other rituals that usually depend on religion, socio-economical status, and so on. Of course, that is how Reid would explain it. After being a lawyer as well as a federal agent since his graduation from law school, he has become morbidly accustomed to the Western rituals, to the particularly American honoring of a person's passing.

Yet another thing Reid would say is that in most of those other cultures, there is a specified period of mourning, akin to the saying that "time heals all wounds." Here, there are no strictures on mourning. It can last for days, weeks, or years. He cannot tell whether this is a good or bad thing. But he acknowledges something else that Reid has said - that time does _not _heal all wounds.

The preacher continues, and he does not hear because whatever is being said is totally unapplicable to the subject of the speech. He knew his wife, ex-wife, so well and does not need to be told that she will be missed, the Heavens bless her. Instead he remembers the sound of her voice, her stubborn stare, and every single moment of _their _life. He remembers her strength as Jack is born, her tolerance, her patience, and her conviction. He remembers her love and tenderness, her dreams and her fears, and then finally he remembers that god-awful shot.

He almost drowns in these memories and as that piece of him is lowered to the ground, he remembers that it died.

When he gets to the eulogy, he remembers all this, and tries to tell them. He feels that he is forgetting something, but after all that's happened, after the condolences of which only precious few are sincere, he can't bring himself to remember.

Finally, he arrives in his apartment once more with Jack just behind. He does the locks over and turns around, aware that he will be doing this for the rest of his life. The rest of the evening is like a silent film without even music to remedy the dreariness. It seems like an eternity before he tucks Jack in and then shuffles heavily to his own bed. Slipping under the sheets alone feels like a new experience, yet it was so long ago that he last shared it with someone. Nonetheless, he lies awake for hours.

Lifetimes later, his is awoken from his mindless state when Jack enters in his truck-adorned pajamas. "I can't sleep, Daddy." He sniffles for the first time.

Immediately he's up with his son in his arms, and the smallest of tears have fallen between both. They have each other, and they share. Finally he remembers what he has almost forgotten: her last words, her dying request. It is then that he understands her and knows that she loved them both. And then, he begins a story that he shall tell many times thereafter.

"Jack, shh. Do you wanna hear a story?"

"Sure, Daddy."

"One day, when I was a kid in school..."

He remembers that time does not heal all wounds, the void is never filled, and the scars are always the slightest bits visible. He remembers what she stood for and that love is the most important and the only thing powerful enough to stave off the pain. Piece by piece, day by day, word by word, he remembers.

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_"Oh heart, if one should say to you that the soul perishes like the body, answer that the flower withers, but the seed remains." - Kahlil Gibran_


End file.
